In the fast-paced world of digital landscape, mastering the art of eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization (or eCommerce CRO) is the key to unlocking untapped sales potential.
Your online store's success doesn't solely rely on attracting visitors; it hinges on persuading them to become loyal customers.
This article unveils powerful conversion rate optimization hacks for eCommerce that can effectively double your sales. Whether you're a seasoned eCommerce entrepreneur or just starting your digital retail journey, these optimization strategies will be your secret weapons to boost conversions, supercharge revenue, and create a shopping experience that keeps customers coming back for more. Without further ado, let's get started!
Understanding eCommerce Conversion Rate
1. What is eCommerce CRO?
Ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of enhancing the percentage of website visitors performing specific actions or the conversion rate. It often involves optimizing mobile experience, checkout experience, and product presentation, etc.
2. How to calculate conversion rates for your eCommerce business
To determine your conversion rates, you can follow a straightforward calculation: Divide the number of conversions achieved during a specific timeframe by the total number of visitors who accessed your website or landing page. Afterward, multiply the outcome by 100% to express it as a percentage.
For instance, if your online store records 10,000 visitors and 100 conversions within a defined period, your store's conversion rate stands 100/ 10,000 = 1%.
Tracking these metrics, including the total number of visitors and conversions, can be easily accomplished using tools like Google Analytics.
While all eCommerce businesses want to sell more, only some know how to make it happen. Before you try getting more people to buy from you, you should understand what your current website visitors are up to. Find out where they're having problems, why they might leave, and how they use your website.
This initial investigation gives you a solid idea of what's stopping people from buying or helping them make a purchase. It sets the stage for effective strategies to improve your conversion rates.
3. What is a good eCommerce conversion rate?
As of July 2023, the average conversion rate for eCommerce businesses stood at 1.99%. However, if you're seeking a more specific benchmark for your online store, it's important to dig deeper, as conversion rates can vary significantly depending on the product type.
In July 2023, products in the arts and crafts category boasted the highest eCommerce conversion rates, at an impressive 5.0%. This category was closely followed by health and wellbeing products at 3.75% and kitchen and home appliances at 3.11%. (Source: IRPCommerce)
Beyond these top three categories, the following five product types with their respective conversion rates are as follows:
- Pet care: 2.20%
- Fashion clothing and accessories: 1.77%
- Sports and recreation: 1.70%
- Home Accessories and Giftware: 1.61%
- Electrical & Commercial Equipment: 1.52%
Essential tools for online store owners to improve eCommerce conversion rates
1. FoxKit app
Introducing FoxKit, an all-in-one sales boost app developed by FoxEcom. Installing FoxKit is a breeze, and it is designed to seamlessly integrate with your Shopify store.
This remarkable tool is your one-stop ticket to boosting conversion rates for eCommerce, transforming casual store visitors into enthusiastic buyers, and converting one-time shoppers into dedicated, loyal customers.
FoxKit offers an array of upsell features to turbocharge your sales efforts. These features entice customers to explore and purchase higher-value items, upgrades, or additional add-ons, ultimately generating more revenue.
FoxKit’s upsell features include enticing in-cart offers, pre-order options, discount pop-up, and back-in-stock alert.
But that's not all – FoxKit's dynamic sales-boosting features aim to turn visitors and browsers into committed buyers. These features include countdown tools, free shipping goals, a fun Lucky Wheel, sales notifications, and more.
Furthermore, FoxKit provides comprehensive analytics reports for each of its features. These reports offer invaluable insights into your store's performance, empowering you to make informed, data-driven decisions to enhance your sales strategies.
When it comes to pricing, FoxKit caters to various needs. It offers a free plan for stores just starting and provides a 14-day free trial for their paid plans, which include the Starter plan for newly launched stores at $19 per month, the Growth plan for expanding brands at $49 per month, and the Enterprise plan for businesses looking to scale up at $99 per month.
To boost for the highest conversion rate, you can combine using qikify Sales Pop-up & Social Proof to maximize the results.
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is an entirely free tool developed by Google that is extremely simple to set up. It informs marketers about their audience's online behaviors, browsing history, and spending habits.
It aids website owners in increasing conversion rates by providing insights into critical aspects of their website, such as the sources of visitor traffic, user interactions with content, duration of page visits, and the number of visitors who perform valuable actions like making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter.
3. Mailchimp
Mailchimp, a widely recognized and highly regarded email marketing platform, serves as a valuable tool for eCommerce entrepreneurs. It allows them to communicate consistently with their customer base, share fresh content, and educate potential clients about their products.
Mailchimp simplifies the process of gathering customer data, creating visually appealing emails, and automating email marketing tasks. Additionally, it offers insights into various aspects of your email marketing campaigns, including metrics like email open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. This data can be leveraged to significantly enhance the customer experience and increase conversion rates.
While Mailchimp offers a free tier, transitioning to a paid plan becomes necessary as your audience and requirements expand. Paid plans commence at $13 per month.
If you’re not sure how to build your leads, you can start from using beautiful templates of qikify Contact Form Builder app. It is easy to set up and highly-engaged with your audience on the storefront.
4. Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights is a completely free tool that evaluates website performance and provides guidance for enhancing page loading speed.
When using this tool, you can promptly assess the loading speed of your website and its pages across various devices. After pinpointing underperforming pages, you can implement Google's recommendations to enhance loading speeds.
You might be curious about the significance of your store's speed. The speed of your online store directly affects your customers' shopping experience, your conversion rate, and how easily people can discover your store. Enhancing the speed of your online store ensures that shoppers can easily locate your store and are less likely to leave your site.
However, it's important to note that while store speed is crucial, it's not the sole factor to consider. Ultimately, finding the right balance between functionality and performance for your online business is a decision only you can make. So, stay calm and don't be disheartened if your speed score isn't as high as you'd prefer it to be. As long as your customers are enjoying your brand, and your revenue is on the rise, you're on the right track.
5. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey, as its name implies, is a valuable tool for conducting customer surveys. These well-designed and skillfully executed surveys can provide website owners with profound insights into how customers engage with and perceive their websites.
The feedback gathered from customers through these surveys can be directly integrated into a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategy, guiding future updates and improvements.
SurveyMonkey boasts an intuitive interface that simplifies the survey creation process and streamlines result collection. Moreover, you can seamlessly embed these surveys directly into your website, enhancing the overall customer experience. The survey results are presented in a user-friendly format for easy comprehension.
While SurveyMonkey offers a free option, those seeking more extended, customized, and dynamic surveys can explore subscription plans starting at $25 per month per user.
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We've carefully selected 18 top Shopify apps spanning various categories, offering both free and paid options to provide you with a comprehensive range of choices to boost your sales.
9 Hacks of Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization
In this article, you'll discover 9 practical tips to increase your eCommerce conversion rate. These tips are categorized into 3 main areas: Mobile Experience, Checkout Experience, and Product Presentation.
A. Mobile Experience
1. Ensure responsive website design
Your website must effortlessly adapt to diverse screen sizes and devices to ensure a consistent, visually appealing user experience, whether on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop.
Over the past 10 years, there has been a significant increase in the share of global web traffic originating from mobile devices. As of May 2023, mobile phones accounted for 51.52% of total web traffic. Therefore, neglecting mobile optimization risks alienating over half your potential customers, significantly impacting sales and revenue.
To achieve seamless adaptability across devices:
- Mobile-First Approach: Prioritize mobile design from the outset, emphasizing mobile layout and functionality during the design phase.
- Fluid Grid Layout: Employ a fluid grid layout that adjusts to screen size, preventing issues like awkward overlaps or tiny text on smaller screens.
- Real Device Testing: Test your website on actual smartphones and tablets to identify and fine-tune design issues, avoiding relying solely on emulators.
- Optimize Images: Compress and optimize images for mobile devices, enhancing load times and user experiences.
- User Testing: Conduct user testing on various devices to gather feedback and pinpoint areas for enhancement.
2. Prioritize speed for mobile optimization
Research has found that even a one-second delay in page load time can lead to a potential 7% drop in conversion rates. To keep them engaged and drive conversions, optimizing your site for speed is paramount. Here's how:
- Reduced HTTP Requests: Minimize server requests by combining CSS and JavaScript files and minimizing your code.
- Leverage Browser Caching: Enable browser caching to store website data on users' devices, resulting in faster return visits.
- Mobile-Centric Design: Develop a mobile-specific design that avoids large files and complex layouts, ensuring swift mobile loading times.
- Regular Speed Assessment: Consistently assess loading times using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to identify and rectify slowdowns.
- Image Optimization: Compress and resize images, employing formats like JPEG and PNG, or consider WebP for better compression and quality.
3. Simplify mobile navigation for optimal shopping
Simplifying mobile navigation is crucial for an exceptional shopping experience. Prioritizing a user-friendly mobile navigation experience is not only a matter of convenience but a requirement for retaining and converting mobile visitors.
You can follow these steps to simplify mobile navigation:
- Intuitive Menus: Craft clear and intuitive menus with straightforward labels. Prioritize essential categories and products. Consider a mobile-specific menu that enhances user-friendliness. This often entails using iconography, sliding panels, or collapsible menus to maintain a clean and organized interface while offering easy access to various parts of the website. Avoid cluttered menus or excessive links that overwhelm users. Keep it concise and relevant. If you haven’t found a good app to help you create your dream mega menu, qikify Smart Menu is highly rated as the simplest solution for this task.
- Search Bar: Include a prominent search bar to facilitate quick product discovery.
- Filters and Sorting: Implement efficient filters and sorting options to help users refine their searches effectively.
- Breadcrumb Navigation: Use breadcrumb navigation to provide context and allow easy navigation back to previous pages.
- User Feedback: Collect user feedback and analyze behavior to continuously refine and optimize your mobile navigation.
This is a website menu displayed on the desktop (Image: Pandora)
Here is Pandora's collapsible mobile menu
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Learn more about how to boost mobile optimization for a better mobile experience and enhanced business performance.
B. Checkout Experience
4. Streamline the checkout process for seamless purchases
When it comes to the checkout process, simplicity reigns supreme.
A significant 87% of online shoppers are inclined to leave their shopping carts behind if the checkout process appears to be complicated.
It is clear that consumers strongly desire a straightforward and hassle-free checkout experience. This expectation leads consumers to seek specific checkout features, including:
- Minimalist Approach: Trim down the checkout steps to request only essential information. Minimize form fields and avoid unnecessary data collection.
- Guest Checkout: Implement a guest checkout option, enabling users to buy without the hassle of creating an account.
- Progress Indicators: Clearly display the steps in the checkout process, reassuring users about the time required.
- Auto-fill: To expedite the process, use auto-fill for repetitive fields like shipping and billing addresses.
- Multiple Payment Options: Provide various payment methods to accommodate user preferences, including BNPL and installments.
Zara’s guest checkout
If you're a Shopify merchant, we strongly advise you to use Shop Pay, which is Shopify's premier accelerated checkout option. This enables your customers to swiftly complete their purchases with a single tap, using their preferred express checkout method for a quicker transaction experience.
With Shop Pay Installments, you can reduce the number of abandoned carts on larger purchases by up to 28%.
5. Create clear Call-to-Actions for effective engagement
A call to action (CTA) is essentially a button or link that directs your audience toward the next step in your sales funnel. When CTAs are unclear, users might find it challenging to discern the path to purchasing or subscribing to a service.
Consider the following strategies to instantly grab visitors’ attention with your CTA:
- Strategic Placement: Position CTAs prominently on your mobile site, ensuring they're easily accessible without excessive scrolling. For instance, place them near product descriptions or at the end of a seamless checkout process.
- Contrasting Colors: Make CTA buttons stand out with vibrant, contrasting colors that catch users' attention. This can help draw their focus and guide them toward taking action.
- Compelling Text: Craft concise, action-oriented text for your CTAs. Use phrases like "Add to cart now", and "Checkout" to communicate the desired action clearly.
- Limited length: A CTA must be short enough to fit into button format. Stick to 5 words or less.
Tentree’s Call-to-Action for checkout
6. Build customer confidence with trust signals
Trust signals are pivotal in reassuring online shoppers about the security and reliability of your e-commerce platform. Suboptimal payment security and data privacy practices cause around 17% of customers to abandon their carts.
Here's how to establish trust and credibility with your trust signals:
- SSL Certificates: SSL certificates encrypt data between the user's browser and your site, reassuring customers that their sensitive information is secure. A green padlock displayed on a webpage indicates the presence of an SSL certificate, which can serve as a visual assurance to instill confidence in customers and boost conversion rates on your website.
- Security Badges: Prominently display recognized security badges from reputable providers like Norton or McAfee. These badges signify regular security checks, building confidence in your site's safety.
- Payment Logos: Showcase logos of accepted payment methods, including credit cards and PayPal. Familiar payment logos assure users that their transactions are handled securely.
- Customer Testimonials: Incorporate genuine customer reviews to highlight positive experiences and satisfaction. Real endorsements from fellow shoppers carry significant influence.
- Privacy Policies: Clearly outline your privacy policy, detailing data collection, use, and protection. Transparent privacy practices demonstrate your commitment to safeguarding user information.
Adore Vintage showcases trustworthy and accepted payment options
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All of these trust signals mentioned above can also get embedded during the checkout process, with a little help of qikify Checkout Customizer, to improve your store’s CRV.
Read through our blog article on Shopify checkout page customization to learn how to create an exceptional checkout experience.
C. Product Presentation
7. High-quality imagery: visual impact matters
High-quality images are highly important for eCommerce stores when it comes to conversions. Users purchase a product from an eCommerce store based on their experience. Images can play a crucial role in improving users’ overall experience on any eCommerce website.
A substantial 93% of online shoppers regard the visual presentation of products as the most important factor influencing their purchasing decisions.
Here's how to make your visuals work for you:
- Crystal Clarity: Invest in high-resolution images that leave no room for ambiguity. Customers should be able to zoom in on intricate details without pixelation.
- 360-Degree Views: Provide a comprehensive view of your products by including images from various angles. Allow customers to virtually rotate and scrutinize items.
- Zoom Functionality: Implement zoom features that enable users to examine products up close. This boosts confidence and aids in the purchase decision.
- Lifestyle Imagery: Showcase products in real-life settings to help customers envision owning and using them. This can be particularly effective for fashion, furniture, and home goods.
Sephora’s zoom functionality
8. Detailed product descriptions: the key to informed shoppers
Based on studies, 20% of online shopping failures stem from insufficient or unclear product details.
Think of product descriptions as your perpetual sales assistants; they work round-the-clock to enhance the customer experience by furnishing comprehensive information about your products and motivating potential buyers to make immediate purchases.
Now follow those methods to create informative product descriptions:
- Material Mastery: Specify the precise materials used in the product's construction. By highlighting quality materials, you can justify price points and attract buyers. For example, users will likely select comfortable, durable materials when shopping for clothing, so you should incorporate those points into your descriptions.
- Dimensional Delight: Include accurate dimensions and measurements to help customers visualize the product's size and suitability for their needs.
- Care Confidence: Provide clear care instructions. This not only demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction but also ensures the longevity of the purchased item.
- Compatibility Clarity: For products that require compatibility (e.g., electronics or accessories), elucidate which products or models are suitable. This reduces uncertainty and the likelihood of returns.
Old Navy’s product descriptions for clothing
9. User-Generated Content: The trust builder
User-generated content (UGC) is generated by regular consumers when they share their thoughts about a brand's products or services. This content can take various forms like social media posts, images, videos, GIFs, and reviews.
According to Social Media Week, 72% of brands believe that UGC helps them connect with customers and build trust. In simple terms, UGC is a powerful way for brands to engage with their audience using content created by their customers and fans.
If you're wondering how to use UGC for your online store, here are four common types to start with:
- Reviews and Ratings: These are the most common types of UGC and can include star ratings, written comments, images, and videos.
- Customer Testimonials: These are more detailed stories about a customer's experience with a product, often highlighting their life before and after using it.
- Visual Customer Experiences: In the world of online product sales, having real people provide visual proof of a product's quality is unbeatable. User-generated photos hold tremendous potential for eCommerce, with 63% of US and 66% of UK consumers expressing more trust in customer photos than in images created by brands or retailers.
- Unboxing Videos: These are popular, especially for subscription-based businesses. They show customers opening a product and sharing their excitement. Unboxing videos help potential buyers see the product's quality before making a purchase.
Bruvi’s visual customer experiences
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You can refer to our article on eCommerce product page examples and best practices for more inspiration.
Get ready to turn your eCommerce venture into a profit powerhouse
As we wrap up our exploration of eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), remember that it's not just about creating a successful website; it's about crafting an online powerhouse that continually maximizes your sales potential.
With the nine conversion rate optimization strategies shared in this article, you can empower yourself to boost your revenue, enhance user experiences, and nurture a customer base that keeps coming back.
